Scandal isn’t always a problem for New Yorkers, who tolerate a certain amount of eccentricity in their mayor
It is hard to pick a favourite moment from the New York mayor’s race, entering its final stage of the primaries this week. It could be the episode in which two candidates – Shaun Donovan and Ray McGuire – were asked to guess the average house price in Brooklyn and answered $100,000, which would have been correct in 1985. (For those operating in 2021, the correct answer is $900,000).
It could have been the implosion of the Dianne Morales campaign, the most progressive candidate by far, predictably destroyed from within when staffers complained she’d created a “hostile” environment and that the work, presumably stuffing envelopes, was “repetitive and unstructured”. Meanwhile, it is hard not to love the storyline still playing out around Eric Adams, Brooklyn borough president and current frontrunner in the primary and therefore the election: that he secretly lives in New Jersey.
